Thursday, February 09, 2006
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Once upon a time I was a fascist and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it because I was brainwashed by fascists who didn’t know it either. Since I could not think for myself I aped my elders who were too traumatized by six centuries of tyranny that culminated in wholesale massacres, deportation, life in the ghetto, and still another World War to even begin to understand the difference between fascism and democracy. I understand their confusion and political disorientation. What I refuse to understand is the pretended confusion of individuals born and raised in a democracy who behave like fascists in the name of patriotism, as if patriotism and fascism were incompatible or mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. As far as I know no one has ever accused Hitler and Mussolini of being unpatriotic. It was Stalin himself who named World War II a “Patriotic War.”
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I define a fascist as anyone who thinks nothing of violating someone’s fundamental human right of free speech in the name of a misguided or self-serving definition of patriotism. A fascist has no use for free speech and does not consider that a serious aberration because he is either ignorant or pretends not to know that the worst crimes against humanity begin with the violation of someone’s human right.
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Friday, February 10, 2006
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Once more I have been asked to solve our problems. Once more we are invited to pretend that solutions are obscure verbal formulas like abracadabra that when spoken they will usher us into a new Golden Age. Once more I shall have to remind our dupes that solutions cannot be ordered the way you order pizza with or without anchovies.
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In the 5th century (that’s 1500 years ago) two of our foremost historians (Khorenatsi and Yeghishe) exposed two of our central problems (corruption in high places and divisiveness) and provided their solutions (honesty and solidarity). I will let you decide what are two of our central problems today.
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I have said this before, I will say it again, and it bears repeating: Finding solutions is not our problem, implementing them is.
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After lobotomizing our literature our leaders spread the rumor that so far our writers have failed to solve our problems.
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Let us assume for the sake of argument that our literature has been a waste of time and an irrelevant commodity that has ignored our problems. Let’s go further and declare all our writers to have been mental masturbators who did nothing but sing songs about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and the glories of the Armenian language. What about our faith? We brag about being the first nation to convert to Christianity but fail to practice what we pretend to believe. What could be easier than to convert to Christianity and what could be more difficult than to be good Christians?
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When Yeghishe spoke against divisiveness he was only paraphrasing a well-known passage from the Scriptures: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” When was the last time our leaders behaved as though they had read and understood the meaning of this passage?
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After quoting two medieval historians allow me to quote a 20th-century author if only to illustrate the distance we have traveled during the last fifteen centuries. “Our political parties,” Gostan Zarian tells us, “have been of no political use to us. Their greatest enemy is free speech.” And, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
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Saturday, February 11, 2006
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Once in my salad days when I contradicted a fellow Armenian with some degree of vehemence, he said, “You may be right” with complete indifference, smiled, and turned his back on me. That’s when I learned an important lesson: in an argument let the facts speak for themselves. No need to assert the moral strength of your argument. Believing in the moral strength of your argument may color your perception of the facts and thus weaken your position.
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If the Pope doubts his faith seven times every day (as Italians are fond of saying) one is justified in questioning all belief systems, especially if they are based on the words of a schoolteacher, a parish priest, a bishop, a mullah, an ayatollah, or a political boss – especially a political boss.
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Politicians and truth might as well be mutually exclusive concepts. Sometimes you will be much closer to the truth if you believe the opposite of what a politician says, and sure enough, for every politician who says one thing there will be another who says the opposite.
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Facts are important provided you also keep in mind that they do not exist in isolation. You may not be able to contradict facts but you may argue against their context. I suspect one reason we don’t see eye to eye with the Turks on the Genocide is that we emphasize the facts and they emphasize the context.
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There are honest Turkish writers and historians today who are willing to accept the facts of the Genocide. On the day some of our own historians (most of whom enjoy the support of a political boss, which might as well be the kiss of death on their objectivity) express a willingness to consider their context, we may have a better chance of reaching a consensus.
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And if, at this point, you are tempted to contradict me with vehemence and accuse me of being a revisionist, a denialist, a traitor to the Cause, and perhaps even the lowest form of animal life, I will say, “You may be right” with a smile.
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